Mothergunship is Out of This World

Released today, you should probably check out Grip Digital and Terrible Posture Games’ Mothergunship.

Casting you as a robot in space, it’s your job to fight back against an alien invasion. You’re essentially the resistance’s last hope of turning things around. But to reach your main foe, the titular Mothergunship, you’re going to have to go through plenty of smallfry first.

Fast-paced robot action

Imagine the fast-paced first-person shooting action of DOOM crossed with the roguelike structure of Immortal Redneck, and you’ve got a pretty good picture of what Mothergunship‘s gameplay is like. Each mission you undertake is basically a sequence of combat arenas, with shopping areas and mission summary chambers providing brief respite between them. Sometimes the combat arenas have an added twist to them though, like a combat challenge you can complete for a reward.

What makes Mothergunship so entertaining to play is that when I say that it’s fast-paced, I mean it. Your robot moves with speed and grace, and can jump multiple times in the air to evade attacks and reach new areas. Moving at speed isn’t optional in Mothergunship either; you need to if you want to avoid taking damage. Taking inspiration from bullet hell shooters, at times the screen will be awash with projectiles all heading your way. If you want to make sure your run doesn’t end prematurely, you better be aware of your surroundings and act appropriately.

If you can think it, you can build it

What’s undoubtedly the best thing about Mothergunship, however, is how it lets you create your own guns. While your robot’s fists pack a good punch, you’re going to want some good ranged weapons to deal with bigger foes from a distance. Mothergunship is unique in that instead of providing you with an arsenal, it simply allows you to take so many weapon parts into each mission. Then, upon arriving, you need to craft a weapon to get you started.

Honestly, there are so many weapon parts for you to combine that you can let your imagination run wild. While your starting weapon is likely to be a bit tame, after killing some enemies, collecting coins and visiting a shop on location, you can quickly be armed to the teeth with some outrageous monstrosities. In one run I managed to fit three rocket launchers into one gun while having two heavy blasters on the other. On another, I combined a standard blaster, a rail gun and a shotgun, just because I could. And they’re tame compared to what you can create with more time and resources.

There’s more to come

Experimenting with new weapon combinations takes your enjoyment of Mothergunship to a whole new level, and you don’t have to worry about running out of ammo either; everything is powered by rechargeable energy. Bigger, more elaborate guns just deplete your energy quicker, but by equipping certain mods you might be able to negate that somewhat. Mods can have other effects too, like increasing damage output or precision. Overall, your weapon options are vast, and combined with Mothergunship‘s engaging and addictive gameplay, it makes for a real blast.

At the moment, Mothergunship only offers a single-player experience. In August, however, online co-op will be added as a free update, with additional weapon parts and features to come too. For that reason, I’m going to hold off reviewing the title for a while. If you’re not bothered about online co-op though, there’s no reason you shouldn’t jump into Mothergunship right now. Creating your own weapons is every bit as good as it sounds, but what’s even better, gameplay hasn’t been put on the back burner to accommodate it.